UC Santa Cruz students launch startup company

Mobile app connects students to clubs and organizations on campus

SANTA CRUZ >> Just over the hill from Santa Cruz, Silicon Valley — one of the nation’s largest centers of industry and innovation — has spawned tech companies that have become some of the largest in the world.

Now a group of UC Santa Cruz students wants in on the action, launching a startup company from their dorm at UCSC and rolling out the company’s first offering, a mobile app for college students.

“So it really came out of a need, I realized that going to these (club events) and writing your email down on a piece of paper was not the best way to do it, so that’s pretty much where the idea for our app came from”, said Vernon Coleman, co-creator of the application.

The app, called ClubConnect, is designed to connect college students with campus clubs and organizations based on their interests, a process currently accomplished through a once yearly club gathering at UCSC where clubs and organizations set up booths to advertise their activities and recruit potential members.

“The (club recruitment) fair only happens once or twice during the school year and then the rest of the time you’re on your own, whereas you can you use this app whenever you want throughout the year,” said Winston Boyce, president of the Society for Black Engineers at UCLA and a running back on the Bruins football team.

While Coleman and his partners were previously unfamiliar with many of the advanced computer coding methods needed to develop an application of this type Coleman said they taught it to themselves and their code is now dialed in and running smoothly after being developed entirely in-house by the three co-founders.

The app, designed by Coleman, a freshman at UCSC, and co-founders Joshua Pena and Kevin Robertson, has been implemented at UCSC and the group is in the process of a rollout at UCLA with plans to spread to schools nationwide in the near future.

“What we did for UCLA is just pick up the phone and say ‘hey we’re coming to UCLA there’s this app that we launched at UCSC would you be interested?’” said Coleman, a native of South Carolina who came to UCSC in part to be nearer to Silicon Valley. “We sent them a link and we’ve now got a few UCLA clubs signing up for the app so we’re just starting to expand to UCLA and they’re very excited about it.”

In addition to the app, the group has registered an LLC with the state of California and is launching the app as the first offering from their startup company called Novateur, LLC. The app is available for Android and IOS operating systems and is being used by more than 500 students currently at UCSC with about 115 campus clubs and organizations posting activities and events, varying from bonfire gatherings to group discussions and more, on the app.

CLUBCONNECT

ClubConnect app connects students to clubs and organizations on campus. Free download is available in the iTunes or Android stores.